Large Wall Street independent investment banks had a nice thing going.
Because much of what they did was not depository banking,
there was little Federal oversight. Instead, the SEC let them
run voluntary oversight programs.

Now, the SEC chairman, Christopher Cox, has assessed
the performance of their voluntary oversight program:

The financial upheaval of
the last six months has “made it absolutely clear that voluntary
regulation does not work” for the bank supervision program, Cox said in
a statement. The program “was fundamentally flawed from the beginning,
because investment banks could opt in or out of supervision
voluntarily,” he said.

Imagine that.

In other news, Colonel Saunders figured out that it does not work well,
when foxes guard the henhouse. Oh wait, that headline was
from 1930.